Digital subscriber line add/drop multiplexers (DSLAMs) receive information from a variety of customer premises and communicate that information to a backbone network. In order to receive information from customer premises, DSLAMs must be configured to recognize the customer premises equipment from which the information is being received. One solution for configuring the equipment is to maintain a table of information on the available connections at DSLAM. Customer premises equipment may then be manually configured based on the assignment scheme in the table. A drawback to this method is that it requires a visit to the customer premises, and it also requires information about the available connections on the DSLAM. Accordingly, there is a need for a method that would allow DSLAMs to be configured automatically to recognize customer premises equipment.